


Shifting Out the Weeds

by orphan_account



Category: Psycho-Pass
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Dark, F/M, FandomLovesPuertoRico, Shinya/Cigarettes, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-30
Updated: 2017-11-30
Packaged: 2019-02-08 18:44:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12870720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: After Yuki dies, Akane's hue starts to slip. She'll blame it on anything, except the obvious.





	Shifting Out the Weeds

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geckoholic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic/gifts).



> I took so long to write this! In my defense I re-watched the series. Still, please feel free to point out any inaccuracies. Written for the wonderful and generous [geckoholic](http://archiveofourown.org/users/geckoholic) for FandomLovesPuertoRico. I hope this is anything you'll like at all.

64\. Higher today than yesterday. Yesterday she was a stormy sky, 58, today a troubled sea. Pulled deeper and deeper into the blue, it seems.

She doesn’t feel any different than yesterday.

She’d turned Candy off, tired of artificial concern, so Akane wakes to silence. Checks her phone for new messages.

64.

What had she _dreamed_? To muddy her hue six whole points.

Even now, Akane believes understanding must be the answer. It doesn’t matter that it was Talisman who had advised her- back before they knew Makishima’s name, his face, _his spotless hue_ \- the wisdom was sound. The more she understands Kogami, the more she understands herself and that alone makes it a relationship worth pursuing. She’s learning so much. Changing.

 _64_.

Good advice, but bad luck. A fake talisman is no help against real evil. Masatake may have been excellent at roleplay, but Akane doesn’t need help pretending.

She feels more pretend everyday.

___

She finds him in the gym. He is always in the gym lately, sequestering himself into an even smaller kennel than what Sybil had already seen fit to give him. Penned in under a low ceiling, huffing and puffing smoke until it fills up the small room. The dull thud of his fists greet her before she reaches the door. A welcome sound, Ko’s practiced violence.

Shinya knows she’s there; he won’t stop until she makes her presence known.

Instead, she leans against the doorframe, arms hugging her ribs. Watches her wolf pace his cage.

His feet are light on the padded floor. Wary motion that directs him skillfully out of the way of attack again and again. Akane watches his stomach twist as he bends to avoid the swing of the holo-droid’s arm. Clumsy, now that she’s seen him fight like a cornered animal. All skill, no grace.

She can still feel how her body takes an interest in him, his movements. Wonders if her can sense it in her gaze- some trick he’d have picked up from Joji Saiga.

Weaving, weaving- Akane keeps her eyes on the floor, tracking the fluid non-pattern to his movements. Watches sweat darken his pants at the waist, along his thighs. Turn his hair into dark spikes. Like waiting for tea. 64. As though the flavor of him has sunk into her, darkening her soul as she steeps.

How does he stay fenced in this beige room and not go crazy?

Ko’s fist lashes out, sudden, violent and Akane fights her immediate reaction, stilling her jump except for a fine tensing of all her muscles. Her body still floods with adrenaline and she bites her lip.

If Shinya looked to her now, he wouldn’t need Saiga’s skill to know her thoughts.

He is crazy. His hue, his Enforcer status tells her he is atypical. Latent. ‘Do it.’ He’d told her, blood on his teeth, blood in his hair. And his eyes- ‘ _Kill him._ ’

A sharp whistle as the droid registers his sudden change in strategy. It’s head re-directs with eerie precision. Too fast to be human, and Akane wonders if he’d finally gotten Karanomori-san to adjust it’s abilities, make it faster, stronger like he’d wanted. Wonders if Karanomori had talked him into her bed yet, like she loves to tease. It’s a mean, cold thought and Akane pushes it out immediately. Those had been coming more frequently too- more on days where her hue stayed high, never dipping below sixty.

High for _me_ , she tells herself. Normal for plenty of other citizens.

Ko swings and it’s head snaps back, hollow eyes focusing on nothing. Akane’s hand slides along the wall before he can bring the fight to it’s showy, expensive end- this droid isn’t the thing that deserves his fury. The glass control panel lights up with a single touch of her finger, and Akane kills the program.

The hologram winks out, but still Shinya doesn’t turn to look at her. The powerful lines of his back face her, and Akane feels a disquiet, a surety she has mis-stepped. A creeping anxiety she has begun to feel more often with him- a fear of misunderstanding.

It’s _so_ important to her that she understands.

This is what the Sybil System had seen in her, when they’d ranked her for the MWPSB. She is sure of it.

“You could’ve let me finish.”

His voice, when he finally speaks, is warm and Akane feels some terrible tension in her unspool. He bends to grab his towel, and Akane looks away. Shinya’s already crossed the room when she looks back and Akane follows him, dropping her bag on the floor as she did. He opens the fridge to grab a water, pulls out a pair without asking. The ceiling fan whirls smoke lazily around the room, an upended dance.

Akane accepts wordlessly. So much of their time was silent understanding when they were together- but when they’re apart- when they are apart the doubt consumes her.

“Got a lead on the case?”

Akane shakes her head, takes a swallow of water. She came here to leave their current case behind, but visiting Shinya sometimes feels like the definition of bringing work home. Akane wishes they did have a lead- anything to wrap this case up a little faster. She doesn’t want to see any more dead- it’s wrong, but she wants to focus on Makishima. Wants to finish the job.

(' _Kill...him_...’)

“Any thoughts?” She asks him, can’t not pick his brilliant brain when he’s right there, even though the case is the last thing she wants to talk about. He shakes his head, and they’re close enough now that Akane can tell he’s lying for her now, a white lie- a change of subject. It’s a kindness Shinya practices often that Akane had not expected from him.

No one else she knows lies so easily. Of course, what do a few points here or there matter to him?

Ko’s hand, large and unsure as he is in almost nothing else, settles on her waist. He’s asked so much more of her, Akane can’t understand this hesitance. Sex should be nothing after the crime they had come so close to committing together. Rather than calling attention to his cautious mood, Akane goes up on her toes, positioning her mouth to offer more easily. Sensible heels, and bad decisions.

Her purse doesn’t have anything in it she doesn’t normally bring to work. Her holo-compact, her cell phone. The weighty stack of case files she’d printed at Masaoka’s suggestion. He’d told her ‘sometimes insight comes more easily when you’re holdin’ it’.

Akane doesn’t know herself anymore at all, and no insights are coming. Oh, well- she hadn’t really thought _this_ was what Masaoka had meant.

___

Akane sleeps late the next morning and stumbles to get ready for a brunch with Minase. She had forgotten to reactivate Candy last night, so instead she wakes to silence and an uncomfortable creeping cognizance of her tardiness. It would be the first time they would see each other since the funeral.

She arrives late, and Akane can tell her exhausted demeanor is wearing on her friend. Still it feels strange to be on the receiving end of Kaori’s vitriol. Normally Kaori treats her with a scratchy fondness, well worn if still badly fitted. Saiga-sensei would be disappointed; Akane should have been able to predict at least this change.

For as long as they had known each other, Yuki had played the target for their friend’s sharp wit, Akane stage left, the reluctant mediator. Her absence at this table isn’t something Akane can ignore.

Yuki had _begged_ her- do something- Akane-

Akane closes her eyes against the white sun, swirling her straw absently through her drink, churning the ice. It’s hot out, even though Akane had dressed in her coolest, thinnest underclothes that morning. More thought than she’d put into her holo-clothes, just swiped a few times to a preselect.Her mother had always told her to imagine she was somewhere cooler.

Akane thinks of the sterile chill of Ouryou’s studio room, the clean smell of dried, pressed flowers, a smell Akane had previously associated with wealth, and femininity. The smell mingles in her head with that of the flowers at Yuki’s funeral.

She pushes her drink across the table.

“I blame you.” Kaori tells her dry eyed, her face hard and intense. “My hue therapist told me that’s normal during the recovery process.”

Akane wonders if it’s as normal that she blame herself. She is thankful for the interruption when Ginoza messages her, thankful to leave two empty seats behind.

She hadn’t really been there, anyway.

-

The crime scene feels too real, horribly so. They always do.

Akane can smell the blood from the hallway, has been getting a nose for it. She nods to Yayoi standing in the hall. She hadn’t bothered to check the roster on the ride over like she’d used to- she already known her hound would heed the call.

He has the best nose in the job after all.

Yayoi looks back at her emptily, following Akane with her eyes but without reacting. Why would she? Akane feels like a ghost, her shoes making no noise on the holo-decorated floor. Looks like wood, but her heels wobble and sink into a thin layer of carpet.

He is leaning beside the door, eyes fixed on the forensic bots, their small, patterned movements as they turned the crime into data. Masaoka had told her once, all the while steadily drinking her under the table, that these scenes used to be processed entirely by humans. A fact he assured her she’d find little mention of in Sybil approved literature. Ginoza had called it barbarism.

She can’t imagine walking over- her hands in the blood-

His hands tight on the silver blade- her neck just _smiling_ -

She is more real at a crime scene nowadays than anywhere else, for whatever that’s worth. Shinya looks to her as soon as she enters the room, and Akane is grateful to meet his eyes, instead of the horror in front of her.

“What happened?” She asks, and her voice still sounds so young, so childish. It felt as though it should have grown up with the rest of her. Shinya sighs, pushing up from the wall, hands still in his pockets. Elbows big angles, and Akane thought about the poetry of his body without the stark lines of his suit.

“Victim was another student. Age 16. Last Hue reading was a 46- perfectly clear. Despite the nature of the cuts, we’ve ruled out self-harm for sure this time-”

She stares at the body. Joji Saiga had confirmed Talisman’s advice. Akane needs to understand- once she understands, she can find the truth. The truth means clarity. Eyes wide, Akane stares unflinchingly into death, tries to make sense of it’s messy lines.

Student. Akane has already seen her uniform hanging behind the door; Ko would be proud if she told him. She wonders what her grades had been like- sometimes schoolwork suffers before hue does. Sixteen, and beautiful. Long waves of brown hair spreads across the floor where she lay, sharp distortion along her edges as she disturbs the holo decor. Her face is pale and calm in death, her wrists savaged. Blood paints the floor.

“She definitely didn’t kill herself.” Yayoi says from beside the doorway, her arms across her chest. “The school’s equivalency tests are in two days.”

“You think that has relevance to this case?” Ginoza queries and Akane can feel Kogami’s weariness with this political dance down in her own bones. Ignore him. _Think_. Understanding is the key. Sixteen and beautiful and a life-changing test in two weeks, and her wrists torn open like a red bloody corsage-

“I think it has relevance to any student at a school this elite. The last student was something of an anomally- although, same homeroom. She was on the student council-”

Good grades then, Akane thinks. And beautiful. Riko Ouryou had a been a growing sword in a garden of roses-

This girl is a cut rose.

“We could look at her relatives, her teachers.” She says, the words falling from her, stones carried over a waterfall. “Maybe the student council.”

“You got an idea?” Shinya asks her, voice pitched low, meant for her ear alone. Akane shook her head.

“I agree.” Yayoi says immediately, and Ginoza looks back and forth between them. Akane can feel Shinya strain at the lead. She bites down a smile, feeling inappropriate in front of the dead angel on the carpet. Her dog is eager for the hunt. Instead of watching his face, his mouth, the rumpled collar around his neck Akane lets her eyes focus on the the girl.

46.

Akane hadn’t even checked her Hue this morning. If it had darkened over night she could have been stopped by any city scanner. The thought is distant, terrifying. A tornado of emotion.

“Akane.”

She pulls her eyes unwillingly from the death in front of her, up to where Inspector Ginoza is standing, mouth tight. The drones crawl around his shined leather shoes, like crabs on a rock, undisturbed. He looks to her, serious behind the glint of his glasses.

“Are you all right, Inspector?”

Akane nods, not sure if she can lie to him out loud.

-

Masaoka follows the forensic bots back to the lab, worn soles on the pavement until he ducks into his assigned car. Akane is continually surprised by how graceful they all are with bound hands.

Yayoi and Ginoza have headed to the school for another round of fruitless questioning. This time when Akane dipped her head to the other woman, Yayoi had nodded in return. It made Akane want to laugh. What a normal problem, for a normal job- struggling to attain the respect of your peers.

 _Subordinates_. She has to remember that.

She doesn’t think they’ll find anything, so she doesn’t bother tagging along. Has plenty of work at headquarters, she tells herself. Enough, she hopes to distract her, kill the tired worry in her head.

Instead of tangling those thoughts around again, muddying herself, Akane heads back to the office. With everyone else gone, the room feels deserted. Akane thinks about looking into the current case- thinks about the spread of the angel’s wings across her bloodstained floor- and instead her hands pull the stack of written case notes across her desk to her. A small library that held all anyone knew on a single man- a very dangerous man-

‘Do it.’ He’d said, blood on his muzzle. His hand reaching for her. ‘ _Kill him_.’

-a man who has taken the structure of her life and twisted, who was rending the fabric of society around them. The words run in front of her eyes, the looping lines of her handwriting in faint graphite- a metallic smell like blood particles in the air. A razor smile.

 _She’d wanted to_.

The thought she doesn’t dare think. Better to cast those stones into the well at the back of her mind, hope they don’t come back up. It doesn’t matter that the urge had fled her, the energy once coursing through her leaving her weak, shaken. Once she’d thought that dreadful killing thought, the thread of her life had been put into flux.

Akane wishes she had someone with a clean co-efficient to talk to- someone beside the sharp, silver ghost in her head, his Sybil-blessed blade, the cool fallacy of his logic.

As she reads, her eyes dry out under the industrial fans, her fingers combing through the sheaves of paper, studying Kogami’s notes. He’s so imposing in person, but his notes on the case are thoughtful, almost philosophical in his questioning of Makishima’s motives. He’s off-duty today, was only at the crime scene because Inspector Ginoza had requested his insight.

He certainly hadn’t requested though, of that Akane is sure. Hounds baying at their masters whistle.

Akane wants to be fair, where she can’t be equal. Knows she can’t.

Ginoza returns without Yayoi and Akane can tell from the hard lines of his mouth that he was unsuccessful. He sits in her lonely room for awhile, rustling papers busily and bids her goodnight before he leaves.

He has no right to judge. Not with his hue.

It is an uncharitable thought and Akane scrubs at her weary eyelids before finally standing. Long hours in her chair have tightened her body, and she toes at shoes clumsily, before picking up her bag- holo-compact, fresh underclothes, her badge- and powering down her monitor.

She leaves the one dark doorway to head toward another. Rides the elevator all the way downstairs, to the gym. He hadn’t waited for her, but she knows where he’ll be. Understands his rhythm, his routines better than her own these days. Even if she hadn’t known, all Akane would’ve had to do is follow the smoke back to it’s source.

Maybe she is learning something.

His door is definitely dark, but it’s always open to her so Akane doesn’t bother to knock. Kicks her shoes off. Steps inside, and shuts the door behind her. Her holo-clothes glow faintly in the pitch dark room, but Ko isn’t asleep. Her wolf rarely sleeps, less often with both eyes closed.

That’s alright. Akane doesn’t either.

“I had an idea about the case.” She tells him, voice a question directed into the dark. She can hear a rustle as he turns to face her under the sheet. She powers down her compact, and pulls her top over her head. Slides her underwear down her thighs and she wonders if her can see her like this. If he cares to look.

She can’t stop looking at him, even standing in the blood of a sixteen year old.

The bed dips when she sits down, and Shinya rolls into her, allowing his body to follow the natural dip of the mattress. Flows into her orbit and Akane feels instantly better with his weight snugged against her. She reaches a hand into the unknowable darkness, rests it easy on his hip.

“The angel?”

Akane blinks, lost, Makishima’s smile spreading across the face of the girl laying sprawled across her bedroom floor, and when she realizes her confusion, she laughs. Laughs again at the dry sound of the first.

“No.” She says, to the uncertain shape of him beside her in bed. “About Makishima.”

“That’s what kept you so late?” Ko asks.

“No.” She says again. Waits a moment for his sigh to hit her like hot smoke. “Yes.”

When Akane sleeps, her mind runs the same clipshow. Yuki on the stairs. Makishima’s smile, a bright and pure as his hue, as bright and pure as the clean silver line of Yuki’s murder weapon. His hand raises. Blood spatters. The climax to a symphony not even Sybil can hear.

Makishima keeps her up late every night.

Shinya’s silence makes Akane feel naked, and she shivers.

Her hound knows her- a nose for blood, a nose for secrets is what Kogami has- and his hand rises to sit warm on the base of her spine. His body connects with hers, shapeless and free in the dark. It’s almost anonymous, but the warm, dim space of Shinya’s room is about as far as Akane can get from the Net. She leans back into his support, wordlessly grateful.

“What was your idea?” Shinya asks, and Akane wonders if he had fucked Karanomori. If they’d smoked cigarettes in bed together afterwards. Wonders if he’d fucked other inspectors, wonders if he’d smoothed his hand in circles on their back, soft and slow, how he does for her. Shinya’s bed is the only place she’ll let herself have these thoughts, unable to ward them off this deep in the dark.

Akane closes her eyes. Let’s herself fall beside him, rolling them close enough that her skin brushes his every time they breathe.

“How did you know to call her an angel?” She asks him, her eyes on the blurred outline of his face. In pure darkness, everything is fuzzy, even the familiarity of his jaw, the rumpled strands of his hair. “I never said-”

“I don’t know.” Shinya says. Breathes the words into her. “I guess, I could see it in your face.”

Here, Ko’s bed. The only place Akane feels real anymore.

She kisses him, her lips brushing his cheek to get to his mouth. It’s familiar in that Akane normally kisses him first, and terrifying in the same way it is every time. He tastes like his cigarettes, and unwashed breath. It’s starkly real, and Akane deepens the kiss as fast as she can, desperate for it. She wants to wreck herself on him but Shinya’s hands are frustratingly gentle on her skin. Stroking slowly as though he can calm her.

It doesn’t work, she won’t let it and the sheet pools off the foot of the bed onto the floor as Akane rolls to straddle him. Presses him under her. _Subordinate_. Now he’s the one fumbling, speeding to catch up, thumbs hooking his waistband and pulling. Frantic motion until the moment he’s inside her.

The perfect connection makes them still.

He guides her mouth down to him, hand to her neck, gentles the emotions draining from her. His hands touch her aimlessly, with no apparent goal in mind until her hips start to grind. The heavy thrust of her body riding them deeper into the bed.

“Do it.” He breathes under her, and Akane clenches tight around him, waiting for his entreaty. “ _Come_.”

When she does, Akane feels alive. She sleeps.

She dreams.

His knife at her throat. No. Fujihara Yuki, dressed as she was for their graduation, a layered glittering diamond thing wrapping her neck. Minase snorts beside her.

‘Everyone knows they aren’t real.’ She’d said. ‘Why bother?’

Yuki smiled but this time it was Makishima’s smile an assured, catty thing with no place on her face.  
‘What is real these days?’ She’d laughed.

In the dream, blood pours across her jewelry.

A pounding knock on the door rips her from her nightmares, and Akane wakes like a door slamming, eyes open. She does not feel rested, far from it. Her mind aches from the weight of balancing two guns in her arms.

“Ko! Wake your ass up! We got another dead kid!”

“Give me a minute!” He shouts past her, his voice booming in the darkness of his prison cell. Then, much quieter, more for himself than her, “ _Shit._ ”

The bed tosses like a ship as Ko flings himself from it, and Akane does her best to match his speed. Her toes flex along the wooden floor, searching for her underwear in the dark. Always wood floors, white walls in Ko’s room- he’s never liked the holo-decor. It’s reassuringly old-fashioned, like the thick feel of cardstock file folders between her hands, or Masaoka’s brewed coffee. Glossy printed photos that turn crime scene’s into amateur art.

“C’mon, Ko, Gino’s-”

The door slams open, light pouring across her body. Akane doesn’t think to dive for the covers. When she raises her eyes to meet Masaoka’s shocked face, Sybil glowing in his eyes, she wonders what her hue is at. He points the gun down, away from her immediately, and Akane can hear Shinya’s sigh drift across the room.

“Sorry.” He says, jerks the hand holding the Dominator. “Protocol, if an Enforcer doesn’t answer the phone.”

“We’ll be out in a moment.” She informs him, eyes forward, and he jerks his head in a nod before turning back toward the hallway.

“And hey, Shinya, 234. Must be having a good morning.”

“Get the hell out.” Shinya tells the closing door. Akane rolls her eyes at the satisfaction in his voice. Masaoka is old school, a traditionalist. She wonders how this will affect their working relationship. Wonders if it will matter as he’s only an enforcer.

Doesn’t matter that the old man’s a better detective than her.

They dress in silence. Akane wonders if her hue has darkened like the tips of Masaoka’s ears.

Only Yayoi is in the hallway when she finally opens the door, Shinya a puffing shadow behind her. More than embarrassed Akane could tell he was hungry, now that they’d caught a fresh scent. Akane nods to her. Yayoi nods back.

In some ways, it is their first meeting, and Akane is filled with a regretful sense of respect for Yayoi’s endless composure. Her homage is her mimicry, the continued passivity in Akane’s eyes at the other woman’s scrutiny.

“Ginoza leave with the others?” Ko asks and Yayoi focuses her eyes past and above her. Nods.

“Good.” Shinya says satisfied, and then he ducks his head, filling her vision abruptly. She squeaks when their mouths meet, and when squeezes her eyes shut rather than look at their unamused audience. Lips are their only point of contact, brief but warming. He steps away just as smoothly, but she can see the color in his cheeks- like he’d just confessed.

Yayoi is rolling her eyes, but she doesn’t choose to comment, just walks with them to the car. Shinya sits in the back, and Akane buckles her seatbelt tightly across her chest. They leave the radio off, and after a moment, Akane selects the police band to play instead.

Static, the sound of a peaceful city and Akane lets the white noise fill her as she watches the city roll past. After a moment, she feels Shinya’s hand slide up to rest on her shoulder, a comfortable reminder of his presence.

“Just because I don’t mind hardly means Ginoza will feel the same.” Yayoi says, and she sounds stiff. Maybe a little apologetic. Akane feels Shinya’s hand slip away like a memory.

“I don’t see why Inspector Ginoza needs to be informed.” Akane says sharply, and her voice doesn’t sound childish, but she hates it all the same. The hurt that flares for a second in Yayoi’s eyes. “I think Masaoka can be persuaded to keep the information to himself. Unless you wanted to tell him yourself, Enforcer?”

“-Ginoza to Tsunemori. Pick up pl-”

She taps the glass with steady fingers.

“Akane here.”

His voice is small coming through the car speakers, but Akane knows she can trust Ginoza to be professional even unknowingly on speaker phone. Knows she can trust her subordinates to be quiet as well.

Knows her actions are a career choice she never would have made before- before she’d wanted to-

“We have another crime scene. I want you to head there instead.”

He rattles off an address that Akane types in on the dash. Shinya lights a cigarette.

The rest of the ride passes in silence.

They beat the forensic bots to the next reported crime scene. It’s a quiet walk up to the apartment, silent as the car ride, but she can tell something is off as soon as he does. Can tell from how he puts his nose to the air, how his grip changes on the handle of Sybil’s gun.

They’d beaten the killer to her escape, and Akane watches Shinya aim and fire from across the room, Sybil playing judge and executioner. They’ll never even know _why_. The Dominators had all the information they’d needed. She declines Masaoka’s offers of drinks after.

It’s normal that they celebrate. They’d won. Caught the bad guy, if caught means sprayed her across a hallway. Easier to ignore Shinya’s watching eyes, the wolf biting her heels. When she goes home, she turns on Candy. Watches the recommended videos for unwinding stress. Goes to bed early.

Dreams of Makishima cutting her best friends throat.

Akane wakes on time, the the bleating of her alarm. Candy greets her, worry lilting her previously cheerful voice.

“Good morning, Akane! Oh no! It appears your hue has darkened. You are currently at... 71... oh my! You had better take a stress reliever. Start your day off better!”

Yesteday, a troubled sea. Akane wonders if today she finally sinks.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Do androids dream of eclectic [police?](http://honeyedlion.tumblr.com)


End file.
